Georgetown University Law Center

About: Georgetown University Law Center is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supreme court & Global health. The organization has 585 authors who have published 2488 publications receiving 36650 citations. The organization is also known as: Georgetown Law & GULC.

The Free Exercise of Religion: An American Perspective

Abstract: How should a constitutional democracy treat the religious beliefs and practices of its members? In January 2005, I gave a public lecture on this topic in Germany as part of a year-long lecture series on religious tolerance ("Ein Neuer Kampf Der Religionen? Staat, Recht und Religiose Toleranz") hosted by the Freie Universitat Berlin. The lecture was subsequently published in a European volume of comparative law edited by Matthias Mahlmann and Hubert Rottleuthner. In my contribution to this volume, the only chapter written by an American, I first sketch the history and main contours of American free exercise jurisprudence. I then consider how that jurisprudence might apply to one controversy that has generated considerable debate in Europe: laws which regulate or ban the wearing of Islamic headscarves or other conspicuously religious attire by students in public schools. In brief, I argue that while U.S. constitutional protections of religious liberty are comparatively weak, at least by certain European standards, the probable effect of American doctrines of free expression, neutrality, and anti-discrimination would be to render laws such as the French headscarf ban constitutionally suspect.

Tradition as Precedent: Articulating Animal Law Reform in China

Abstract: This article provides intellectual context for the current debate over animal rights in China, and identifies how China might be able to actualize an ecological basis for animal protection coherent with its evolving identity as a nation. Indeed, animal welfare in China is very much a microcosm of this balance of continuity and change - in September 2011 the Chinese government canceled a dog meat festival with a 600-year history in response to strident online opposition to the event. However, the authors question the moral coherence of criminalizing dog consumption in a secular, diverse nation such as China. It is uncertain whether there is an effable logic for distinguishing notions of ritual, community and friendship that animate the legality of this contested practice.

Cloning matters: how Lawrence v. Texas protects therapeutic research.

Abstract: Several states have banned therapeutic cloning and the federal government is considering legislation that would do the same. Some of these laws, including the proposed federal law, make it a crime for a patient to use any product derived from therapeutic cloning. Government action restricting a patient's freedom in this way must at least have a rational basis. Opponents of therapeutic cloning argue not that the medicines derived from it are unsafe or ineffective, but rather that the embryonic stem cells used in therapeutic cloning represent potential life that must be protected. Yet some spare embryos produced as a byproduct of fertility treatments are destroyed while others are used for research. This disparate treatment reveals that the real basis for the ban on therapeutic cloning is a repugnance at cloning, a sense that it is unnatural. The Supreme Court's recent decision in Lawrence v. Texas, as well as earlier precedent, casts serious doubt on the idea that repugnance can be an adequate basis for a criminal statute.

Insider Trading, Investor Harm, and Executive Compensation

Abstract: This article examines the three central challenges to insider trading set forth in Henry Manne's 1967 book: 1) that there is no coherent theory explaining insider trading; 2) that there is no significant injury to corporate investors from insider trading; 3) that insider trading constitutes the most appropriate device for compensating executives. As to the first, the article states that federal regulation has passed through three distinct movements that do not necessarily connect to one another. The current focus on agency concepts and the broader principles used by the Supreme Court in O'Hagan probably have no more staying power than the theories that defined previous movements. Investor harm has been difficult to show. A coherent theory about harm may turn on principles from behavioral economics and cognitive psychology. Executive compensation, the most controversial of Manne's original assertions, is an even weaker argument today because of the broadening array of alternative forms of executive compensation and their relative advantage in balancing incentives for executives and policing management behavior.

MERS Litigation -- Brief of Amicus Curiae the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School and Law Professors in Support of the Appellee

Abstract: MERS represents a major departure from and grave disruption of recording practices in counties such as Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, that have traditionally ensured the orderly transfer of real property across the country. Prior to MERS, records of real property interests were public, transparent, and provided a secure foundation upon which the American economy could grow. MERS is a privately run recording system created to reduce costs for large investment banks, the “sell-side” of the mortgage industry, which is largely inaccessible to the public. MERS is recorded as the mortgage holder in traditional county records, as a “nominee” for the holder of the mortgage note. Meanwhile, the promissory note secured by the mortgage is pooled, securitized, and transferred multiple times, but MERS does not require that its members enter these transfers into its database. MERS is a system that is “grafted” onto the traditional recording system and could not exist without it, but it usurps the function of county recorders and eviscerates the system recorders are charged with maintaining. The MERS system was modeled after the Depository Trust Company (DTC), an institution created to hold corporate and municipal securities, but, unlike the DTC, MERS has no statutory basis, nor is it regulated by the SEC. MERS’s lack of statutory grounding and oversight means that it has neither legal authority nor public accountability. By allowing its members to transfer mortgages from MERS to themselves without any evidence of ownership, MERS dispensed with the traditional requirement that purported assignees prove their relationship to the mortgagee of record with a complete chain of mortgage assignments, in order to foreclose. MERS thereby eliminated the rules that protected the rights of mortgage holders and homeowners. Surveys, government audits, reporting by public media, and court cases from across the country have revealed that MERS’s records are inaccurate, incomplete, and unreliable. Moreover, because MERS does not allow public access to its records, the full extent of its system’s destruction of chains of title and the clarity of entitlements to real property is not yet known. Electronic and paper recording systems alike can contain errors and inconsistencies. Electronic systems have the potential to increase the accessibility and accuracy of public records, but MERS has not done this. Rather, by making recording of mortgage assignments voluntary, and cloaking its system in secrecy, it has introduced unprecedented and perhaps irreparable levels of opacity, inaccuracy, and incompleteness, wreaking havoc on the local title recording systems that have existed in America since colonial times.